IF Comp 08 Reviews
This is my third year playing and judging IFs for IF Comp, a competition of interactive fiction (think Zork or Adventure). This year, I'm taking a cue from fellow If Mudders and reviewing entries instead of only assigning a number.
There's 35 games. I'll post with cuts, but I'm not filtering (so that non-friends can read), so it may get a little noisy.
I'm trying to solidify my judging process, both to be more fair and to make sure I have applied a standard set of criteria for each game.
First, the game gets assigned to a tier based on how much they interested me, or my general feeling about playing them:
1-2: Bad. The author should not have entered this IF. It may be a lost cause on the level of a Panks game, or it might just be incomplete, untested, not an IF (and I have loose standards there), or just plain stupid. The worst of these feel like a huge waste of my time.
3-5: Meh. It's a complete IF, but it failed to grab me. Games end up here if they're boring, uninspired, etc.
6-8: Solid. It's a complete IF and I had fun playing it.
9-10: Awesome. These are rare gems, combining interesting stories with a deep level of interactivity and flexibility. Not all comps have had them.
After a tier is assigned, I'll adjust a score up or down for various details:
- Bugs that should have been found through beta testing. Seriously, beta test your IFs before entering them in a comp.
- Major grammatical problems. Typos slip by testers sometimes, but really egregious problems will jar me out of disbelief.
- 'Verb hunting'. This is a broad criterion, not just verbs specifically, but any time I try to solve a puzzle with >USE FOO WITH BAR and fail, but the walkthrough says the right answer was >USE FOO ON BAR, that's a problem. Beta test transcripts should solve most of these, and I'm okay with having to try a couple different approaches, but if I'm stumped on a puzzle for a couple minutes because I haven't tried the one correct phrase, I'll dock a point or two.
- 'Huh?' Points off for puzzles where not only is there only one solution, but that solution is totally arbitrary or nonsensical and clues to the solution are either missing, easy to miss, or themselves confusing.
- 'Learn by dying'. Not always bad. If >UNDO works, if sufficient clues have been provided, and if failures provide more clues to the right answer, I may forgive a game that kills you when you do something wrong.
- 'Unintended consequences'. If I lose on turn 200 due to an action I took on turn 10, there needs to be clear warning and a way to reverse things. I may ignore this for a game that is particularly replayable or has implemented an easy way to go back and change fate.
- 'Unreasonable time limits'. There are right ways to do time limits and there are wrong ways. If the game ends on turn 50 no matter what, it must be careful about what counts as a turn. As a player, I should not be penalized for examining things, confusing the parser, or taking non-game actions like >HELP or >ABOUT.
- Other unfair game behavior. A catch-all for general player abuse.
+ Implementation completeness. Can I smell things? What does the gun taste like? If I can't solve a puzzle a certain way, does the game tell me why, or just tell me I can't do that? Beta testing transcripts are invaluable here, as is a good world model. The holy grail of complete implementation is Lost Pig by Admiral Jota.
+ Interesting story. This is fairly subjective, but some games make me want to play in the first two minutes, and some don't. There doesn't even need to be a lot of intro text, so long as the basic narrative is established and it makes internal sense and is interesting.
+ Novel implementation. The game does something new and different and does it well.
+ Replayability. The game has multiple solutions and rewards multiple approaches with enough diversity that I want to go back and try other paths through the game.
Anyway, enough with this, on to the games (links added as I write reviews):
Violet
The Hall of the Fount of Artois
A Date With Death
Afflicted
Escape from the Underworld
Nerd Quest
LAIR of the CyberCow
Piracy 2.0
The Course
Riverside
The Lucubrator
The Lighthouse
The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
Nightfall
A Martian Odyssey
When Machines Attack
Snack Time!
April in Paris
Search for the Ultimate Weapon
Freedom
Red Moon
Grief
Magic
The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
Channel Surfing
Berrost's Challenge
Opening Night
The Missing Piece
Ananachronist
Recess At Last
Dracula's Underground Crypt
Buried In Shoes
Trein
Cry Wolf
Everybody Dies
There's 35 games. I'll post with cuts, but I'm not filtering (so that non-friends can read), so it may get a little noisy.
I'm trying to solidify my judging process, both to be more fair and to make sure I have applied a standard set of criteria for each game.
First, the game gets assigned to a tier based on how much they interested me, or my general feeling about playing them:
1-2: Bad. The author should not have entered this IF. It may be a lost cause on the level of a Panks game, or it might just be incomplete, untested, not an IF (and I have loose standards there), or just plain stupid. The worst of these feel like a huge waste of my time.
3-5: Meh. It's a complete IF, but it failed to grab me. Games end up here if they're boring, uninspired, etc.
6-8: Solid. It's a complete IF and I had fun playing it.
9-10: Awesome. These are rare gems, combining interesting stories with a deep level of interactivity and flexibility. Not all comps have had them.
After a tier is assigned, I'll adjust a score up or down for various details:
- Bugs that should have been found through beta testing. Seriously, beta test your IFs before entering them in a comp.
- Major grammatical problems. Typos slip by testers sometimes, but really egregious problems will jar me out of disbelief.
- 'Verb hunting'. This is a broad criterion, not just verbs specifically, but any time I try to solve a puzzle with >USE FOO WITH BAR and fail, but the walkthrough says the right answer was >USE FOO ON BAR, that's a problem. Beta test transcripts should solve most of these, and I'm okay with having to try a couple different approaches, but if I'm stumped on a puzzle for a couple minutes because I haven't tried the one correct phrase, I'll dock a point or two.
- 'Huh?' Points off for puzzles where not only is there only one solution, but that solution is totally arbitrary or nonsensical and clues to the solution are either missing, easy to miss, or themselves confusing.
- 'Learn by dying'. Not always bad. If >UNDO works, if sufficient clues have been provided, and if failures provide more clues to the right answer, I may forgive a game that kills you when you do something wrong.
- 'Unintended consequences'. If I lose on turn 200 due to an action I took on turn 10, there needs to be clear warning and a way to reverse things. I may ignore this for a game that is particularly replayable or has implemented an easy way to go back and change fate.
- 'Unreasonable time limits'. There are right ways to do time limits and there are wrong ways. If the game ends on turn 50 no matter what, it must be careful about what counts as a turn. As a player, I should not be penalized for examining things, confusing the parser, or taking non-game actions like >HELP or >ABOUT.
- Other unfair game behavior. A catch-all for general player abuse.
+ Implementation completeness. Can I smell things? What does the gun taste like? If I can't solve a puzzle a certain way, does the game tell me why, or just tell me I can't do that? Beta testing transcripts are invaluable here, as is a good world model. The holy grail of complete implementation is Lost Pig by Admiral Jota.
+ Interesting story. This is fairly subjective, but some games make me want to play in the first two minutes, and some don't. There doesn't even need to be a lot of intro text, so long as the basic narrative is established and it makes internal sense and is interesting.
+ Novel implementation. The game does something new and different and does it well.
+ Replayability. The game has multiple solutions and rewards multiple approaches with enough diversity that I want to go back and try other paths through the game.
Anyway, enough with this, on to the games (links added as I write reviews):
Violet
The Hall of the Fount of Artois
A Date With Death
Afflicted
Escape from the Underworld
Nerd Quest
LAIR of the CyberCow
Piracy 2.0
The Course
Riverside
The Lucubrator
The Lighthouse
The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
Nightfall
A Martian Odyssey
When Machines Attack
Snack Time!
April in Paris
Search for the Ultimate Weapon
Freedom
Red Moon
Grief
Magic
The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
Channel Surfing
Berrost's Challenge
Opening Night
The Missing Piece
Ananachronist
Recess At Last
Dracula's Underground Crypt
Buried In Shoes
Trein
Cry Wolf
Everybody Dies